Some 50 local and regional radio licences were awarded to private companies across Austria after the introduction of a revised media law in 1997, in many areas challenging the monopoly of state broadcaster ORF for the first time.

Vienna has been the battleground for a particularly fierce ratings war, fought with hefty advertising budgets and big money competitions.

Four of the city's new privately owned stations, several of them backed by the country's biggest banks and print media groups, went on air in April.

Since then, ORF's total daily audience reach has fallen by more than 14 per cent, according to figures from Radio test, an independent polling organisation.

Fledgling commercial stations, offering a blend of pop and rock music combined with locally centred news and information, have togethercaptured some 30 per cent of the capital's audience.

Yet Austria, which still has no privately owned national radio stations or terrestrial TV networks, remains a stronghold of public broadcasting. Most observers agree it will be some time before commercial radio has more listeners than the state-owned stations, as is now the case in Britain.

ORF's national pop channel Oe3 has maintained its position as Vienna's favourite radio station, despite losing more than 1,50,000 listeners in the second quarter of 1998. ORF's Oe1 speech and classical music channel has not even been targeted by the new private sector, which views such a format as too expensive and elitist to be commercially viable.

"We have to go to work, Oe1 doesn't," says Wolfgang Haupt of pop music station 88.6, with nearly 2,50,000 listeners the biggest of the new private broadcasters. "It has a rich father and lives off pocket money."

Only Radio Stephansdom, due to launch later this month, will play classical music. But Radio Stephansdom,with its church-orientated news bulletins, is largely funded by the archbishopric of Vienna and does not expect to make any profits.

"Liberalisation was intended to enrich the communications landscape in the sense of quality journalism, news and cultural programming," says professor Thomas Bauer of Vienna University's Institute for Publicity and Communications Science. "None of that has happened."

The newcomers already complain they are competing with ORF on an uneven playing field. Antenne Vienna, the city's second biggest private station, says that while ORF radio benefits from heavy promotion on its sister television channels, the broadcaster has refused to let its rivals book TV advertising.

Wolfgang Haupt at 88.6 attacks ORF's quasi-commercial status, which allows it to obtain revenue from both licence fees and advertising.

In one area however, such differences are forgotten. Rather than sell their own advertising slots individually, groups of stations have joined forces to sell airtime acrosstheir range of frequencies together.

"Customers book (advertising time) with Oe3 and quasi-book the four (other member stations) at the same time," explains 92.9 RTL station manager Erich Schoenberg, whose station is a member of the "Oe3 plus" alliance.

The extra cost of "Oe3 plus", Schoenberg says, reflects the additional audience share it allows advertisers to reach.The stations argue this cooperation among competitors gives them access to high-profile advertisers they would not otherwise attract.

And with so many stations all targeting the same young listeners, the advertising alliances represent a lifeline for their smallest members.RTL, which has just 1.2 per cent of Vienna's audience, admits it would not be able to survive without "Oe3 plus".

"That ORF is taking part," says professor Bauer, "is so to speak an Austrian solution. It's a coalition between two competitors that ensures right from the beginning that the competition won't get too nasty."

Bauer says Austria is still too small toproduce any home grown media moguls from its new commercial stations.

Luxembourg-based CLT Ufa for example, which has a 25.1 per cent stake of Vienna's RTL, is 50 per cent owned by Germany's Bertelsmann, while Austria's Fellner Media, whose News magazine has a 24 per cent share in station Antenne, was recently acquired by German publishing house Gruner Jahr, also part of the Bertelsmann empire.

Nonetheless, Austria's banks and print media are well represented in the new commercial sector. The country's biggest bank, Bank Austria, holds 34 per cent of station 88.6, while Erste Bank has 12 per cent of Antenne. The post office savings bank owns 24.9 percent of 92.9 RTL.

Krone Media, publishers of the right-wing tabloid Neue Kronen Zeitung, own 26 percent of 88.6 (the largest share of a single station the law allows a newspaper to own), while the liberal Standard newspaper holds 10 per cent. The conservative daily Die Presse has a 24 per cent stake in Antenne.

With less thansix months behind them, these are early days for Vienna's commercial broadcasters. Many Viennese may not yet have settled on one favourite station, some may not even realise that the privately owned stations exist.

"The interest in radio has risen," says Antenne programme director Martin Konrad. "The cake hasn't stayed the same -- rather, it's got bigger."